This weekend I had the pleasure of attending the Antioch Writers’ Workshop Spring 2016 Seminar.

The theme was “The Writing Life” and featured a talk called “The Inner Writing Life” with Margaret Wrinkle, author of Wash. Hearing her talk about the process of writing Wash was incredibly interesting. She also had some very good advice and reminders for all writers. A couple of things that I took away from her talk are:

• Fear is part of the process, but don’t let it stop you. Decide to be scared later.
• Be present in the experiences you are having. (I tend to be off in my own world sometimes, and need to work on this.)

Ms. Wrinkle said many other things that I found helpful, but I’m not going to type out my page of notes here. If you get a chance to hear her speak, my guess is you will also have a page or two of helpful notes on writing.

The afternoon featured three breakout sessions that were all quite good. Five topics were offered, but we could only choose three of them. I chose the following:

• Query and Pitching – Sharon Short (she filled in for Katrina Kittle)
• Editing Your Manuscript – Kate Geiselman
• Self Marketing – Ryan Ireland

I would like to say thanks to all three speakers because their talks were excellent and provided helpful information. Continue reading →